New media pioneer Shahidul Alam

UNESCO has defined digital literacy as “the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers”. With the emergence of social networking, digital literacy has become a major factor in enabling people to raise their voices, communicate, collaborate and pursue wide-scale social and political reforms.

People begin to think digitally when material things are not the only measurable items, Shahidul Alam says. As a promoter of new media, he helped introduce email to Bangladesh in 1994 and set up the first web portal in the country. Alam is also a founding member and advisor in the LEARN Foundation, which is dedicated to information and communication technology (ICT) training in rural regions.Watch the video interview and find out more:

Now it’s your turn. Do you know how digitally literate you really are? The Digital Literacy Survey is a useful and fun self-assessment tool to find out just how computer-savvy you are. It was designed by the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) Foundation. You can measure your own perceived levels of digital literacy against your actual abilities based on common ICT tasks. It’s available in almost 20 different languages, including Cambodian, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese.

by Juan Ju and Thorsten Karg